Our next stop was Aachen, a small town outside of Cologne. There is a Lindt chocolate factory store there, which sells discounted items. Chocolate + discount= I am there. On our way there we were hungry so we stopped at a McDonalds for a quick bite to eat. As we pulled out there was a divider in the street and we needed to be on the other side going the opposite direction. No cars coming either direction as I pulled out. So I thinks to myself "self, I am going to slyly pull into the far lane and make a u-turn around the divider", seems like a good idea. As soon as I do, a Polizei pulls out of nowhere and is on my tail. I turn at the intersection and as soon as I do, the Polizei turns on its readerboard which tells me to 'stop'. Great! I am driving somebody else's car and I just got pulled over. The lady was really nice and explained what I did is very dangerous. She takes my registration and license and then looks into the car and sees that I have my wife and kids with me. I can hear her say "This is usually an expensive ticket", then she says I am going to charge you 10 Euro for this offense. She beckons me to come back to her car where she whips out a portable debit card machine and charges me 10 Euro on the spot. Now that was a neat experience, even if I did get pulled over. The receipt is now in my journal. Then I realized that we were quickly running out of gas and there were no Esso gas stations in the local vicinity (this makes a difference because through the military we get deeply discounted gas rates compared to the local economy, as long as we use an Esso gas station). The GPS shows a gas station coming up and wouldn't you know it, I make a wrong turn. Now the van says I have exactly 5 kilometers until I run out of gas. I am just praying that a gas station appears on the horizon. This isn't like the USA where gas stations are like weeds, sometimes you won't see one for 10 miles or farther. Luckily, a gas station appeared and we were able to put a few Euro into the tank.
We got to the Lindt store with 20 minutes until it closed. We browsed around and got a general sense of what they were selling and then we made our move. Everybody picked out several items, then several more and then just a few more for good measure. Some of the highlights were chili flavored chocolate and mango centers.
We drove to Cologne, which was only a few miles away. On our way, I needed to fill up the car with gas, easy enough. I pull into the Esso station and right behind me pulls a Polizei...again. This time I knew I didn't do anything wrong, he was just buying something at the store. But I was using my van gas card with that car's info on it. If he checked the card against the van's license number he would notice they don't match. They never check at the German stations, at least until today. The first time I am checked and I am driving a different vehicle...and...the Polizei is in line right behind me. The guy behind the counter looks at my card, turn on his camera to show the license plate on my van, check my card again. I put the most confident, yet innocent look on my face...last thing I wan't to do is look guilty. Thank goodness he doens't say a word to me about it and I am on my way. We find our hotel, which is 20 minutes outside of Cologne. We had to sneak an extra person and dog into our room, no problem.
The next day we took the train into Cologne, my first hint that something wasn't quite right was the larger lady decked out in rainbow colors. We get off of the train near the Cologne cathedral, there was energy in the air, a lot of people gathering and mingling...mostly in rainbows. Uh-oh. Yes, you guessed it, we picked the annual gay pride parade in Cologne on the first weekend in July. Oh boy. After taking a tour of the Kölner Dom cathedral and hiding Eddie in a large bag to get him in we decided to walk to old town. As we did, we noticed we were following the crowds...we were heading to the parade unbeknownst to us. And let me tell you, it was a parade, a festive, loud and flamboyant parade. We saw many things somebody should never see, sadly, my kids saw things they should never see. We walked over to the Lindt chocolate factory and museum. Because we had a dog we had to go in shifts, the girls went first and then McKay and I went. It was interesting, worth the 10 Euro for the whole family, but not more than that. Then we walked over to the Ludwig museum, but we had to take a circuitous route since the parade cut a swath right through the heart of our path. We made it to the art museum and again, because of Eddie we had to go in shifts. The museum was neat and had Picasso and Matisse on exhibit. After that we caught the train back to the hotel and decided to get McDonalds back at the hotel. We just relaxed the rest of the evening.
The next day we jumped into the car and drove to Bonn, Germany. A neat little city where Beethoven was born and lived for the first twenty years of his life. We took the tour of his home...in shifts. They had a strict no photo policy...which we broke again and again. We took pictures of compositions, his pianos, organ, viola etc. Oh yeah, we were just snapping away...but we had to avoid to roaming security. After the museum we walked down to the main square and did some souvenir shopping and then grabbed lunch. The girls had Currywurst, McKay and I had Bratwurst and Sharma had McDonalds...again. We finished the day going to the Birkenstock outlet and doing some shoes shopping. We all got some birkenstocks except for Maddi, they didn't have anything in her size. We drove home and crashed because we were tired. An excellent adventure... Info Travel to city: drove van Travel into city: S-bahn (Spich) Lodging: Holiday Inn Express Cologne Troisdorf (located in Spich) Sites:
